Prayer of Purity

Introduction

When I first began attending an Anglican church, I did not appreciate the prayer that we say at the beginning of worship. A prayer that is called the Prayer of Purity.

I did not really appreciate it. I did not give it a lot of thought. Worship services always begin with prayer, so I thought this one was fine. But the more that I prayed these words at the beginning of worship, the more I fell in love with them - so that now I can say it is possibly my favorite prayer in our entire liturgy.

As we continue our sermon series looking at the Shape of our Liturgy: How our liturgy is shaped, and how our liturgy shaped us, I want to spend today taking a deep look at the Prayer of Purity. We worship in the way that we do because we believe these repeated acts disciple us into the way of Jesus. These liturgical movements shape and form us into a specific kind of people. Last week we talked about how we begin our service with praise! We begin with song and acclamation: Blesssed be God and Blessed be his kingdom.

But then there is a shift. Having just shouted our blessings to God for his goodness and glory, we recognize that we are not capable of blessing God on our own. We bring baggage to church with us. We bring in our sin. We bring in our laziness. We bring in our distraction. We recgonize that we are not ready or even capable of blessing God’s name on our own. And so each week, we confess that to God - that our heats are open before him - the good, the bad, and the ugly. And then we cry out to God for help - because though we may want to worship him, we are unable to do so worthily on our own. So we ask that the Holy Spirit would move within our moving, act within our acting, to worship through us perfectly in a way that we cannot on our own. And so we pray:

Almighty God, to you all hearts are open; all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid. Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit. That we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your Holy Name, through Christ our Lord. Amen.

So I’d like to take a look at this beautiful prayer, but I’d like to take a look at it through the biblical passage that it was based on. Most of these prayers in our liturgy come from a guy name Thomas Cranmer in the 16th century, but what you’ll see throughout this series is that there was always a specific text or group of texts that Cranmer utilized to compose these prayers. So if you have your Bibles, turn with me to Psalm 51, and while you’ll notice that our prayer of purity is not a word for word reflection of this great Psalm - I hope you’ll notice that the theme is absolutely present. So as you turn to Psalm 51, I want to talk about 2 things. First, the Prayer of Purity is a confession that we are not ready or capable to worship on our own. And second, the Prayer of Purity is an entreaty. It is a charismatic prayer that the Holy Spirit would descend upon us with his gifts of love and power to worship through us when we cannot worship on our own.

So Psalm 51.

1 Have mercy on me, O God,

according to your steadfast love;

according to your abundant mercy

blot out my transgressions.

2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,

and cleanse me from my sin!

3 For I know my transgressions,

and my sin is ever before me.

4 Against you, you only, have I sinned

and done what is evil in your sight,

so that you may be justified in your words

and blameless in your judgment.

5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,

and in sin did my mother conceive me.

6 Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being,

and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.

7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;

wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

8 Let me hear joy and gladness;

let the bones that you have broken rejoice.

9 Hide your face from my sins,

and blot out all my iniquities.

10 Create in me a clean heart, O God,

and renew a right spirit within me.

11 Cast me not away from your presence,

and take not your Holy Spirit from me.

Point 1: The Prayer of Purity is a confession that we are not ready or capable to worship on our own.

What is at the backdrop of this psalm? Well, if you look in your Bible, you’ll see a little subtitle for Psalm 51. While the bold face title of the psalm has just been added for you the modern reader to quickly understand a theme of the psalm, these subtitles are a part of the original text. And they sometimes give context to the psalm itself. And what does this one say?

“To the Choirmaster. A psalm of David, when Nathan the Prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.”

So what is the backdrop of this psalm? Well it’s the moment that David had his greatest shame and greatest sin revealed. If you remember, David was king of Israel, and he stole another man’s wife and got her pregnant. Then, to cover up what he had done, he had the man killed. Now, he thought he had gotten away with it, but suddenly a prophet named Nathan comes to his chambers and tells him a parable about a rich man who had tons of sheep and a poor man who had but one lamb. And the rich man took the poor man’s lamb for himself, and David calls down judgment on the rich man for his actions, at which point Nathan famously looks at the King and says, “You are the man.” In that moment, David’s sin is exposed and brought into the light, and David is broken.

And from that place, we see that he cries out to God - recognizing that his sin is always before him - that from the moment of his conception, he has not been able to shake off his iniquity. And so he cries out to God, that he would cleanse him from his sin, and wash him whiter than snow. That God would create in him a clean heart, because his heart was corrupted, and now the whole country knew. He prays that God would not cast him out of his presence, nor take his Spirit from him. In short, David prays for mercy.

And each and every week, when we come into worship, we have the same prayer on our lips. We pray: Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires know, and from you no secrets are hid. What we believe as Christians is that God knows us better than we know ourselves. He knows all of our mixed motives. He knows our desire to worship, and he knows the sin that we bring with us. And yet, knowing all that he knows, he still calls us to come and to be in relationship with him.

You know with this whole question of being a seeker sensitive church, well Anglicans are absolutely seeker sensitive, because we bid sinners to come and celebrate a God who sees all of your baggage, all of your sin, all of the corruption of your heart, and still says come and worship.

Each week we get to confess. We get to recognize that we come here tired some days. Some days we’d much rather be in bed than at church. And you may feel guilty about that, but God already knows it, so just confess it and own it. Some of you got in an argument with your spouse this morning, and you do not feel like singing praises to God. Some of you have had sheer chaos in your house with the kids, and that chaos followed you here, and its incredibly hard to focus on anything that’s happening here.

Well the Lord knows all of that, he welcomes you here anyway. Week in and week out, we recognize that God knows exactly where we are and how we are doing.

Point 2: The Prayer of Purity is a charismatic prayer that the Holy Spirit would grant us his gifts of love and power to worship through us.

And we rejoice in the fact that he still welcomes us to come. Because the prayer goes on to say: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts, by the inspiration fo your Holy Spirit, that we may do something that we can not do, that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name through Christ our Lord.

He calls us to not only confess our sins, but to shift into a posture of reliance upon the Holy Spirit to worship in us and through us. Look back at Psalm 51, because we see this same shift. Verse 10.

7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;

wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

8 Let me hear joy and gladness;

let the bones that you have broken rejoice.

9 Hide your face from my sins,

and blot out all my iniquities.

10 Create in me a clean heart, O God,

and renew a right spirit within me.

11 Cast me not away from your presence,

and take not your Holy Spirit from me.

12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation,

and uphold me with a willing spirit.

13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways,

and sinners will return to you.

14 Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God,

O God of my salvation,

and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness.

15 O Lord, open my lips,

and my mouth will declare your praise.

16 For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it;

you will not be pleased with a burnt offering.

17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;

a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

18 Do good to Zion in your good pleasure;

build up the walls of Jerusalem;

19 then will you delight in right sacrifices,

in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings;

then bulls will be offered on your altar.

Just like in our liturgy, we see here that David transitions from confession to a crying out for the Lord to do a work that he can not do. David asks God, “Create in me a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within me.” Notice what he doesn’t say. He doesn’t say, “Show me what I need to do to create a clean heart in myself. Show me the to-do list that will allow me to finally get rid of my sins. No, he says, God, you create in me a clean heart. Lord, give me a spirit that I cannot make in myself. Fundamentally, David is crying out to God for a miracle. To take his heart of stone, and turn it into a heart of flesh.

David goes on to say, “Restore to me the joy of my salvation.” And think about it for a moment. How often, when we have sin that is ever before us, we see God as a just judge. And he is a just judge. He is holy and perfect and righteous. And when our sin is ever before us, we tend to see God as judge. But at the heart of the gospel is a turn. A turn from seeing God as a just just judge, to viewing God as a benevolent Father through our union with Jesus Christ.

Each week, we are invited by God to take joy in the salvation that we have been given. Joy in the reality that our sins have been removed from us. Joy in the truth that God has welcomed us into his household. Joy in the truth that we celebrate at the Eucharist every week, that through his body and blood, our sins have been removed from us as far as the east is from the west, and he feeds us with his very body as his beloved children. Each week we are invited to have joy in the salvation that has been given to us - a salvation that David only saw in part, but we have received it in full in Christ.

David goes on to say, “Uphold me with a willing spirit.” Give me a willing Spirit. You know, so often we think of the will of our spirits as our own responsibility. It’s our job to will our spirit in one direction or the other. We have a job, and God has a job, but they are separate. But in some mysterious way that the greatest of theologians across history have all struggled to wrap their minds around, and yet they too affirm it, in some mysterious way, God can will within our willing. He can act within our acting. He can move within our moving. A moving that we are still responsible for. A moving that is still completely our own, and yet one that is first moved by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Verse 15 is one that is said every day at Morning Prayer, and it speaks to this very thing. O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall declare your praise. David recognizes that his slips are sealed by sin and shame, and in fear he hides, and yet still God can open his lips to worship.

Just as God can open your lips each and every Sunday. Just as God can move you to be a true worshipper when you might not be feeling it. From beginning to end, the worship that we offer to God is an act of grace. And this is what we recognize every week when we say this prayer:

Almighty God, to you all hearts are open; all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid. Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit. That we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your Holy Name, through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Conclusion

There will be times in our lives when we have no energy to worship. There will be times in our lives when our sin and shame rob us of peace and cause us to run and hide from our Holy God. There will be times when grief over death and loss will sap us of the will to praise the name of God or even love him. There will be times when we come to this place and we’re thinking to ourselves, Lord, if there is going to be any worship happening, it’s going to be because of you. If my heart is going to move, it’s going to be because you moved it. If I’m going to be present to worship and present to love, it’s going to be because you Holy Spirit have done a work in me - of work of love and power.

And that’s why this prayer is a gift. Worship is not about working yourself up to a frenzy. It’s not about you feeling it. It’s not about finding the source of strength within yourself. Worship is about finding the source of strength outside of yourself, and giving up trying to control all parts of your life - including your worship. Life with God does not happen when we get our self in the groove of worship, it happens only as a gift of the Holy Spirit.

So each week we confess our sins, and each week we cry out in dependence, Holy Spirit move us to love and to worship and to magnify. And so we begin our worship with confidence, that God will move within our moving, and act within our acting, and love within our loving, and magnify within our magnifying. Let’s pray.